The gadgets police use to snarf cell phone data

The Michigan State Police department and ACLU are butting heads over the gear …

If a police officer stops you in the course of investigating some matter, can she peruse the contents of your mobile device as she might demand your identification or the contents of the glove compartment of your vehicle? Does a routine traffic stop allow access to your phone's photos, videos, text messages, and contacts?

The gear to grab this data is widely available. Cell phone extraction hardware made by CelleBrite, for instance, can grab a phone's contacts database, its text message log, call history, pictures, videos, ringtones, or even a "complete file system memory dump." The Michigan State Police is a CelleBrite customer, and its routine use is raising questions about the propriety of law enforcement accessing data stored on cell phones.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan worries about how the state police have been using their gadgets, saying that CelleBrite gear can "quickly download data from cell phones without the owner of the cell phone knowing it." They want to know how, when, and where the cops are doing these searches.

After requesting the information using 70 Freedom of Information Act filings, the ACLU was told that documents in question were voluminous. They would include the department's records, logs, and reports of its actual use of these devices. According to the ACLU's latest letter to the MSP, the police estimated that a Freedom of Information Act data retrieval would cost over half a million dollars.

"In fact, we were told that no part of that set of documents would be provided unless we agreed to pay a $272,340 deposit," the ACLU said in a public complaint letter.

"Law enforcement officers are known, on occasion, to encourage citizens to cooperate if they have nothing to hide," the letter concludes. "No less should be expected of law enforcement, and the Michigan State Police should be willing to assuage concerns that these powerful extraction devices are being used illegally by honoring our requests for cooperation and disclosure."

Let's CelleBrite

The CelleBrite company makes many of these phone forensics devices. CelleBrite's profile boasts that the company "introduced a mobile data extraction solution for mobile forensic investigations" in 2007; since then, its products have been used by the military, police, and intelligence agencies around the globe.

The standard CelleBrite Universal Forensic Extraction Device [UFED] is straightforward. It knows how to extract data like a phonebook, camera pictures, videos, audio, SMS text messages and everything else in fairly short order, and it has a cable pack that can interface with most cell phones.

An overview of the CelleBrite

Once a police officer connects the gadget to a suspects' handset, the handheld displays five options:

Extract Phone Data: the option for taking the information directly from the mobile

Clone SIM ID: allows the user to copy a SIM card, enabling the officer to analyze the phone without it being able to take incoming calls

Memory dump beta (for password disabling)

Services: software upgrades and administrative tasks

Option one is easy. The officer connects to the phone, clicks number one, and is directed to a menu of hundreds of mobile vendors. She then picks the vendor and model through a series of drop down displays. Next the operator must tell the device to extract from the phone (as opposed to a SIM card), and whether access a USB or SD data drive.

Then it's time to pick the content types and extract each form of data.

Of particular utility is the UFED Physical Analyzer component of the device. This software allows the police to use specialized search fields to ferret out string patterns in a suspect's cell phone content. The technique is useful in locating certain kinds of file types. For example, JPEG images start with HEX values FF D8 FF. And regular expression (regex) fields can identify specific SMS numbers or dates.

The CellBrite can grab data from just about any cell phone imaginable

Bluetooth, data analysis, and passwords

A physical connection to the phone isn't needed in some cases; much of this work can also be done via Bluetooth:

The UFED searches for visible Bluetooth devices within its proximity, and provides a list of all devices that it finds. Select the appropriate device from this list. Use the ▲▼ keys to move between options. Press ► to continue. The UFED then instructs you to enter "0000" in the phone to complete the pairing between the devices. Once doing this, all data transfer between the UFED and the phone will be performed using Bluetooth.

Field extraction, CelleBrite notes in one brochure, "ensures that a suspect’s phone can be examined before the individual has a chance to destroy or erase data."

125 Reader Comments

If a police officer stops you in the course of investigating some matter, can she peruse the contents of your mobile device as she might demand your identification or the contents of the glove compartment of your vehicle?

An officer can, of course, request proof that I am legally able to drive, but they would need a reasonable cause to ask for access to my glove compartment, right? If I am speeding, an officer shouldn't be able to look in any closed compartments of my car or anything on my cell phone without otherwise having a reasonable cause to do so. Speeding is not a reasonable cause, and neither is me refusing to provide access.

What's with the use of SHE instead of HE in the articles lately.I was taught in English class that when referring to a person in general that can be either male or female HE can and should be used. Using SHE instead would infer that the person in question could only be female.

As per the article it would mean that there are only female police officers.

article wrote:

If a police officer stops you in the course of investigating some matter, can she peruse the contents of your mobile device as she might demand your identification or the contents of the glove compartment of your vehicle? Does a routine traffic stop allow access to your phone's photos, videos, text messages, and contacts?

If a police officer stops you in the course of investigating some matter, can she peruse the contents of your mobile device as she might demand your identification or the contents of the glove compartment of your vehicle?

An officer can, of course, request proof that I am legally able to drive, but they would need a reasonable cause to ask for access to my glove compartment, right? If I am speeding, an officer shouldn't be able to look in any closed compartments of my car or anything on my cell phone without otherwise having a reasonable cause to do so. Speeding is not a reasonable cause, and neither is me refusing to provide access.

This is true, however - their newest trick is just lying and saying "I believe I smell marijuana" and then they can search you. Because they're trained. lol. America...

So the device can crack the iPhone password because the plist containing it isn't encrypted?

What if you are encrypting iTunes backups on your Mac or PC?

Also, iPhone 3GS and 4 let you encrypt the contents. Can any of those files be cracked?

And then certain apps. like 1Password also encrypts the contents. Can that be cracked by a device available to police depts. and apparently sold at retail?

It's one thing if the NSA can use supercomputers to crack whatever encryption is offered on consumer devices and software. It's another if the capability to break encryption is so relatively available to a lot of parties.

And this is exactly why you should simply flat-out refuse to hand over your phone to a police officer if they request it. I would tell them if it's that big a deal for them, then get a warrant. As far as I know, the Fourth Amendment still means something.

What's with the use of SHE instead of HE in the articles lately.I was taught in English class that when referring to a person in general that can be either male or female HE can and should be used. Using SHE instead would infer that the person in question could only be female.

By your logic, using "he" would infer that the person in question could only be male, no? Sounds silly, doesn't it? Why does it even matter?

What's with the use of SHE instead of HE in the articles lately.I was taught in English class that when referring to a person in general that can be either male or female HE can and should be used. Using SHE instead would infer that the person in question could only be female.

By your logic, using "he" would infer that the person in question could only be male, no? Sounds silly, doesn't it? Why does it even matter?

What's with the use of SHE instead of HE in the articles lately.I was taught in English class that when referring to a person in general that can be either male or female HE can and should be used. Using SHE instead would infer that the person in question could only be female.

As per the article it would mean that there are only female police officers.

learn the difference between imply and infer before you start giving language lessons.

And this is exactly why you should simply flat-out refuse to hand over your phone to a police officer if they request it. I would tell them if it's that big a deal for them, then get a warrant. As far as I know, the Fourth Amendment still means something.

At which point the officer politely escorts you to the back seat of his cruiser. I've never had a run-in with the law, but you can see how this works on any police reality show. They have the ability to make life easy or hard for you while they're questioning you, and they use that ability to coerce as much cooperation out of you as they can. Of course you can stand up for your rights, but you'll be paying a definite cost in doing so, and there's no guarantee that a judge or jury is going to respect the stand you take either.

What's with the use of SHE instead of HE in the articles lately.I was taught in English class that when referring to a person in general that can be either male or female HE can and should be used. Using SHE instead would infer that the person in question could only be female.

By your logic, using "he" would infer that the person in question could only be male, no? Sounds silly, doesn't it? Why does it even matter?

The use of "he" to refer to a person of unknown gender was prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early 18th century until around the 1960s

. It might've gone out of favour in the United States of America, but it's still used in the rest of the English speaking world.

+1

A bit pedantic? Maybe, but I'm getting tired of seeing he/she swapped every other page (not saying Ars, just in general) for a gender neutral person just to try and appease some misguided feminist. Like it or not, "he" is the gender neutral form in English.

A bluetooth connection is a network. Isn't there a law against gaining access to someone's computer network without approval?

if you cooperate you've given your approval

seanhsmith wrote:

And this is exactly why you should simply flat-out refuse to hand over your phone to a police officer if they request it. I would tell them if it's that big a deal for them, then get a warrant. As far as I know, the Fourth Amendment still means something.

To me, its the Bluetooth that is truly scary. The documentation provided by CelleBrite notes "Field extraction ensures that a suspect’s phone can be examined before the individual has a chance to destroy or erase data." If the officer had to ask you for permission to connect to your phone, it would kinda defeat the purpose; at that point, why not just ask for the phone? From the instructions noted in the article, it looks like they simply find all devices in range and can connect to whichever they want; "0000" is a pretty standard-looking administrative default/override code, which would probably be bypassing the part where the other device has to approve the connection. So using this device, they can take a lot of information from your phone before you know they're doing anything. That, to me, looks like a process open to a lot of potential abuse.

learn the difference between imply and infer before you start giving language lessons.

His post was perfectly understandable even with that little slip, just as yours was without proper capitalization. Personally I find the 'he/she' dilemma to be a bit annoying too, but I think the better solution may be to hack English grammar a bit so we can use 'they/their' as a non-gendered singular pronoun.

The California Supreme Court allows searches of cell phones without a warrant subject to lawful arrest. The below case describes a case where the suspect was arrested for drug sale conspiracy, so other cases (theft, drug possession, public intoxication, etc.) might be distinguished from this precedent. http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/do ... 166600.PDF

This article points to the blatant loss of control we have on our government agents. They don't even try to determine if the lawyers think its okay or unconstitutional. The police just get the money buy these gadgets and do stuff that clearly falls under the 4th Amendment. The Constitution was ratified 223 years ago and they had no idea that cell phones would be around. Cell phones are effects and should be protected by requiring warrants.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." IV Amendment

I think PEOPLE should just encript their phones and never give the police permission to look at their phones. Even with a warrant just say I have nothing to say to you.

What's with the use of SHE instead of HE in the articles lately.I was taught in English class that when referring to a person in general that can be either male or female HE can and should be used. Using SHE instead would infer that the person in question could only be female.

By your logic, using "he" would infer that the person in question could only be male, no? Sounds silly, doesn't it? Why does it even matter?

The use of "he" to refer to a person of unknown gender was prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early 18th century until around the 1960s

. It might've gone out of favour in the United States of America, but it's still used in the rest of the English speaking world.

+1

A bit pedantic? Maybe, but I'm getting tired of seeing he/she swapped every other page (not saying Ars, just in general) for a gender neutral person just to try and appease some misguided feminist. Like it or not, "he" is the gender neutral form in English.

With all due respect, I do not think that English truly has a gender neutral pronoun, which is why there is so confusion and variation when referring to someone whose gender is not known. Some people use 'he' while others use 'they'. This is actually the first time I've seen anyone use 'she', but I doubt its use is meant to appease the feminists.

English lacks a standard way to refer to someone whose gender is not known (grammar books are not authoritative). Using 'they' sounds the best to my ears and that's what I use and hear when speaking, but when writing in a 'professional' context it is often stigmatized, so the choice when writing is to either create an awkward sounding sentence or to have someone complain about the use of 'they' as a gender neutral pronoun. There is no way to win!

From the instructions noted in the article, it looks like they simply find all devices in range and can connect to whichever they want; "0000" is a pretty standard-looking administrative default/override code, which would probably be bypassing the part where the other device has to approve the connection. So using this device, they can take a lot of information from your phone before you know they're doing anything. That, to me, looks like a process open to a lot of potential abuse.

No, you have to type '0000' on the phone to approve the pairing, which implies that the officer has physical possession of your phone already.

Imagine how popular an anti-police state Android ROM could become with a few tweaks to thwart this sort of data theft. Good on-disk encryption for one thing, plus little tweaks like not allowing 0000 as a bluetooth sync code. The ROM maintainers would have to keep an eye on what capabilities these devices were carrying, of course. I bet a "protect your rights; protect your data" ROM would really work for a lot of the nerderati.

So the device can crack the iPhone password because the plist containing it isn't encrypted?

What if you are encrypting iTunes backups on your Mac or PC?

Also, iPhone 3GS and 4 let you encrypt the contents. Can any of those files be cracked?

And then certain apps. like 1Password also encrypts the contents. Can that be cracked by a device available to police depts. and apparently sold at retail?

It's one thing if the NSA can use supercomputers to crack whatever encryption is offered on consumer devices and software. It's another if the capability to break encryption is so relatively available to a lot of parties.

Wouldn't they still need access to the plist via obtaining your PC? In the "traffic stop" example, I am unlikely to have my desktop with me, so it would require a warrant to enter my home and get it, right? Without the plist file can this device access a password locked iPhone?

And this is exactly why you should simply flat-out refuse to hand over your phone to a police officer if they request it. I would tell them if it's that big a deal for them, then get a warrant. As far as I know, the Fourth Amendment still means something.

At which point the officer politely escorts you to the back seat of his cruiser. I've never had a run-in with the law, but you can see how this works on any police reality show. They have the ability to make life easy or hard for you while they're questioning you, and they use that ability to coerce as much cooperation out of you as they can. Of course you can stand up for your rights, but you'll be paying a definite cost in doing so, and there's no guarantee that a judge or jury is going to respect the stand you take either.

If they request your cell phone and you are not being arrested, flatly refuse. That is common police tactic to get voluntary permission for a search or seizure. DON"T EVER DO IT! Even if you have nothing to hide. We have a soft police state and if they want to make something up its easier the more they have to work with. Don't give them anything and they will go away. Don't say anything and don't do anything. There is nothing that says you have to cooperate with police and talk to them. If they arrest you, the V Amendment protects you against their tyrannical questioning. Just say I have nothing to say to you.

If they threaten you in any way (like placing you in their police car for no reason), ask if you are under arrest or being detained. Ask if you are free to go. Any answer that doesn't allow you to leave, puts them on the spot to justify what they are doing or they know that you know what your rights are. Any stop that doesn't involve a "Terry frisk", investigation, arrest or detention is illegal. Most states don't even allow the police to ask for your ID unless they have probable cause.

If they are messing with you... sue them! The police only try and pull this stuff because PEOPLE let their unlawful actions slide.

This illegal search by Michigan (and I'm sure other police agencies) will be found to be against the Bill of Rights. They are just trying to milk it as long as they can. Police are famous for not doing actual police work and just hoping them can stumble onto evidence or get people to tell on themselves and others.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan worries about how the state police have been using their gadgets, saying that CelleBrite gear can "quickly download data from cell phones without the owner of the cell phone knowing it." They want to know how, when, and where the cops are doing these searches.

This is a bit misleading. It suggests that they can access your data while the phone is still in your possession. I think I might notice when the officer plugs in a cable or types an access code into the phone. ;-)

From the instructions noted in the article, it looks like they simply find all devices in range and can connect to whichever they want; "0000" is a pretty standard-looking administrative default/override code, which would probably be bypassing the part where the other device has to approve the connection. So using this device, they can take a lot of information from your phone before you know they're doing anything. That, to me, looks like a process open to a lot of potential abuse.

No, you have to type '0000' on the phone to approve the pairing, which implies that the officer has physical possession of your phone already.

Imagine how popular an anti-police state Android ROM could become with a few tweaks to thwart this sort of data theft. Good on-disk encryption for one thing, plus little tweaks like not allowing 0000 as a bluetooth sync code. The ROM maintainers would have to keep an eye on what capabilities these devices were carrying, of course. I bet a "protect your rights; protect your data" ROM would really work for a lot of the nerderati.

I would like it if our leading smartphones were already hardened against this sort of attack. Actually, all smartphones.

I was actually impressed that your iPhone data can't be harvested until they can bypass the passcode on it... so if we have our computers locked down to a point where they can't get the plist files then it will be difficult for them to do anything on a iOS device.

i won't give up my cellphone unless the cop escalates the situation. If he asks for it, I won't surrender it. If I'm under arrest, of course it's out of my control. But I won't fall for the carefully worded request for my cell-phone...no matter how he phrases it.

Now, if my answers of "sorry, according to the 4th amendment, I'm not going to do this" or whatever and then he wants to be a dick and do the "oh, I think I smell pot" ploy for the probably cause, that's out of my hands. But I'm not going to just roll over and do whatever he wants.

How does RIM stack up with this thing? I use full disk encryption on my Blackberry, and I understand it to be the most secure phone on the market. Even with all the examples given (iPhone), it still seemed like to snag the entire backup, they needed a file off of the user's PC, which they are unlikely to have with them.

I only ask because if this CellBrite device can snag anything it wants off my encrypted phone, then there has to be a back door of some sort, yes?

Is my Blackberry immune, and if it is not, how does this CellBrite device actually gain access. Does it get around the PW? Crack it? Copy the data for later cracking or rubber-hose password retreval from me? Whats the mechanism?

If they request your cell phone and you are not being arrested, flatly refuse. That is common police tactic to get voluntary permission for a search or seizure. DON"T EVER DO IT! Even if you have nothing to hide. We have a soft police state and if they want to make something up its easier the more they have to work with. Don't give them anything and they will go away. Don't say anything and don't do anything. There is nothing that says you have to cooperate with police and talk to them. If they arrest you, the V Amendment protects you against their tyrannical questioning. Just say I have nothing to say to you.

If they threaten you in any way (like placing you in their police car for no reason), ask if you are under arrest or being detained. Ask if you are free to go. Any answer that doesn't allow you to leave, puts them on the spot to justify what they are doing or they know that you know what your rights are. Any stop that doesn't involve a "Terry frisk", investigation, arrest or detention is illegal. Most states don't even allow the police to ask for your ID unless they have probable cause.

If they are messing with you... sue them! The police only try and pull this stuff because PEOPLE let their unlawful actions slide.

This illegal search by Michigan (and I'm sure other police agencies) will be found to be against the Bill of Rights. They are just trying to milk it as long as they can. Police are famous for not doing actual police work and just hoping them can stumble onto evidence or get people to tell on themselves and others.

I don't know if I'd have the courage to do all of that, being the product of many years of public indoctrination. (Hey, that's true of most of you too, at least I have the self-awareness to see it and the balls to admit it.) Still, I think what you've written here should be cleaned up and put into some sort of Bill of Citizens Responsibilities, since the only way you actually maintain your rights is to actively maintain them. And anti-police state indoctrination should be given hand-in-hand with the respect the police indoctrination you get in elementary school.

"since then, its products have been used by the military, police, and intelligence agencies."

The real story here is that there is virtually no distinguishing between these agencies, and any distinction made between them is applied merely to perpetuate the myth of living in constitutional democracy.

From the instructions noted in the article, it looks like they simply find all devices in range and can connect to whichever they want; "0000" is a pretty standard-looking administrative default/override code, which would probably be bypassing the part where the other device has to approve the connection. So using this device, they can take a lot of information from your phone before you know they're doing anything. That, to me, looks like a process open to a lot of potential abuse.

No, you have to type '0000' on the phone to approve the pairing, which implies that the officer has physical possession of your phone already.

Imagine how popular an anti-police state Android ROM could become with a few tweaks to thwart this sort of data theft. Good on-disk encryption for one thing, plus little tweaks like not allowing 0000 as a bluetooth sync code. The ROM maintainers would have to keep an eye on what capabilities these devices were carrying, of course. I bet a "protect your rights; protect your data" ROM would really work for a lot of the nerderati.

Ah, a re-reading does show the detail of entering 0000 on the phone, not the UFED. So its more of a way around not having a standard connector. With that, I'm more skeptical of the claim that the data can be collected without the user's knowledge, but I'd still like to see exactly how these devices are being used. Like the ACLU, I'm not entirely willing to believe someone when they say that they have a technology highly open to abuse, but that we can trust them to only be using it appropriately.

With all due respect, I do not think that English truly has a gender neutral pronoun, which is why there is so confusion and variation when referring to someone whose gender is not known. Some people use 'he' while others use 'they'. This is actually the first time I've seen anyone use 'she', but I doubt its use is meant to appease the feminists.

English lacks a standard way to refer to someone whose gender is not known (grammar books are not authoritative). Using 'they' sounds the best to my ears and that's what I use and hear when speaking, but when writing in a 'professional' context it is often stigmatized, so the choice when writing is to either create an awkward sounding sentence or to have someone complain about the use of 'they' as a gender neutral pronoun. There is no way to win!

All this. To continue: In Modern English, it's my understanding that it's appropriate (and not uncommon) to use "she" instead of "he" as a generic pronoun, or even to alternate between the two of them. In today's age, "she" is no less neutral than "he". Whether the politically-correctness of it rankles you or not, language has shifted to be (somewhat) less male-centric than it once was when referring to the anonymous individual or the collective.

What's with the use of SHE instead of HE in the articles lately.I was taught in English class that when referring to a person in general that can be either male or female HE can and should be used. Using SHE instead would infer that the person in question could only be female.

By your logic, using "he" would infer that the person in question could only be male, no? Sounds silly, doesn't it? Why does it even matter?

For many, many years it was correct to use "he" when the gender was unknown. If it doesn't matter why did it change?

bedward wrote:

Personally I find the 'he/she' dilemma to be a bit annoying too, but I think the better solution may be to hack English grammar a bit so we can use 'they/their' as a non-gendered singular pronoun.

My personal preference is to rework the sentence to allow a plural pronoun and use "they". If that doesn't work there's always "he or she". "They" in a singular always grates on me in the same way "your" for "you're" and "yay" for "yea" do. Using "she" for someone who is probably a man (as in this article) always jumps out at me as working too hard to be politically correct.

If they request your cell phone and you are not being arrested, flatly refuse. That is common police tactic to get voluntary permission for a search or seizure. DON"T EVER DO IT! Even if you have nothing to hide. We have a soft police state and if they want to make something up its easier the more they have to work with. Don't give them anything and they will go away. Don't say anything and don't do anything. There is nothing that says you have to cooperate with police and talk to them. If they arrest you, the V Amendment protects you against their tyrannical questioning. Just say I have nothing to say to you.

If they threaten you in any way (like placing you in their police car for no reason), ask if you are under arrest or being detained. Ask if you are free to go. Any answer that doesn't allow you to leave, puts them on the spot to justify what they are doing or they know that you know what your rights are. Any stop that doesn't involve a "Terry frisk", investigation, arrest or detention is illegal. Most states don't even allow the police to ask for your ID unless they have probable cause.

If they are messing with you... sue them! The police only try and pull this stuff because PEOPLE let their unlawful actions slide.

This illegal search by Michigan (and I'm sure other police agencies) will be found to be against the Bill of Rights. They are just trying to milk it as long as they can. Police are famous for not doing actual police work and just hoping them can stumble onto evidence or get people to tell on themselves and others.

Still, I think what you've written here should be cleaned up and put into some sort of Bill of Citizens Responsibilities, since the only way you actually maintain your rights is to actively maintain them. And anti-police state indoctrination should be given hand-in-hand with the respect the police indoctrination you get in elementary school.

an arrest warrant DOES NOT mean they can search! items on your person are inventoried at booking, but not necessarily searchable. if i am arrested on my stoop the cops cannot search my house or bedroom or backyard without a search warrant. also, the standard last i checked:

also get used to this word when a cop asks you a question, NO. As in you should use it vigorously. If a cop has a warrant, they don't ask, they just do. when they don't have a leg to stand on, they ask for permission, remember to say NO.

I think there's an app. that lists your rights. There are probably several and one of them was by Meta?

Anyways, if you unlock the phone, is that like opening the trunk and anything incriminating that they find fair game for prosecutors?

What about the ability of a device that gains access to your phone to plant incriminating evidence? Like the cop planting some drugs while pretending to search your car?

Or if they take a dump of your phone for later analysis, what's to prevent them from making up incriminating evidence, claiming it came from your phone? Is there a secured chain of custody for the extraction device, the way they transfer data to the PC doing this further analysis and the PC itself?

Of course, evidence tampering could occur with other types of forensic evidence. There was a recent series in a newspaper about the CSI dept of a city in one of the Carolinas fabricating crime scene evidence to match whatever the investigators wanted.

So the device can crack the iPhone password because the plist containing it isn't encrypted?

What if you are encrypting iTunes backups on your Mac or PC?

Also, iPhone 3GS and 4 let you encrypt the contents. Can any of those files be cracked?

And then certain apps. like 1Password also encrypts the contents. Can that be cracked by a device available to police depts. and apparently sold at retail?

It's one thing if the NSA can use supercomputers to crack whatever encryption is offered on consumer devices and software. It's another if the capability to break encryption is so relatively available to a lot of parties.

What would such a device retrieve if (for iPhone) I went to general settings>reset>erase all contents and settings? Since it only takes a moment to complete this command, I'm assuming that it just dumps the encryption key. So, I see that I am about to be stopped by a LEO, I dump the key on the iphone and then switch it off. Can the device still retrieve anything?

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.